This is possibly my favourite photo of the day.
Lunch ingredients were mainly freshly picked from the garden outside the house and they were all prepared using the one utensil – a battered old chopper. Two floorboards were lifted and the unwanted scraps (and there weren’t many) were thrown between them, which really confused us. Our guests must have perceived our confusion and called us over to look – beneath the floorboards were two pigs in their pen and this was their lunch! The open fire was started almost in the middle of the room and, seemingly, directly on top of the floorboards. The fuel for the fire was wood, the floorboards were made of wood, the entire house was made of wood!! – probably there wasn’t a Health and Safety Officer within 200 miles and nobody batted an eyelid!
At times, either just one, or communally all, the family took turns to cook the meal. This time of food preparation was such an obviously essential part of the family social bonding that we felt more comfortable, yet privileged, sitting on the other side of this large room and watching proceedings from afar.
For the photographically technically minded of you, this image was very difficult to capture well. The room was very dark, but small windows were throwing a very contrasting light across the scene. Within the scene, I wanted to capture the light of the fire, the smoke, an impression of the pots and some of the features of the chef. The photo was taken using an Olympus OMD with a 75mm (150mm equivalent focal length) lens. I used Manual mode, auto focus, ISO 1600, f1.8 and 1/125 shutter speed. I was trying to expose correctly for the area around the fire, which produced a dark image out of the camera. Some judicious use of Photoshop has helped lighten up the rest of the image and remove an otherwise distracting area of brightness.